3

The Plan of the St. Petersburg Battle

Itseems strange, at first glance, to refer to the peaceful march of unarmed
workers to present a petition as a battle. It was a massacre. But the government
had looked forward to a battle, and it doubtlessly acted according to
a well-laid plan. It considered the defence of St. Petersburg and of
the Winter Palace
from the military standpoint. It took all necessary military measures. It
removed all the civil authorities, and placed the capital with its million and
a half population under the complete control of the generals (headed by Grand
Duke Vladimir), who were thirsting for the blood of the people.

Thegovernment deliberately drove the proletariat to revolt, provoked it, by the
massacre of unarmed people, to erect barricades, in order to drown the uprising
in a sea of blood. The proletariat will learn from these military lessons
afforded by the government. For one thing, it will learn the art of civil war,
now that it has started the revolution. Revolution is war. Of all the wars
known in his tory it is the only lawful, rightful, just, and truly great
war. This war is not waged in the selfish interests of a handful of rulers and
exploiters, like any and all other wars, but in the interests of the masses of
the people against the tyrants, in the interests of the toiling and exploited
millions upon millions against despotism and violence.

Alldetached observers now are of one accord in admitting that in Russia this
war has been declared and begun. The proletariat will rise again in still
greater masses. What is left of the childish faith in the tsar will now vanish
as quickly as the St. Petersburg workers changed from
petitioning to barricade fighting. The workers everywhere will arm. What matters
it that the police will keep a tenfold greater watch over the arsenals and
arms stores and shops? No stringencies, no prohibitions will stop the
masses in the cities, once they have come to realise that without arms
they can always be shot down by the government on the slightest
pretext. Everyone will try his hardest to get him self a gun or at least a
revolver, to conceal his fire-arms from the police and be ready to repel
any attack of the blood thirsty servitors of tsarism. Every beginning is
difficult, as the saying goes. It was very difficult for the workers to go
over to the armed combat.The government has now forced them to it. The
first and most difficult step has been taken.

AnEnglish correspondent reports a typical conversation among workers in a
Moscow street. A group of workers was openly discussing the lessons of the
day. “Hatchets?” said one. “No, you can’t do anything with a hatchet
against a sabre. You can’t get at him with a hatchet any more than you can with
a knife. No, what we need is revolvers, revolvers at the very least, and better
still, guns.” Such conversations can be heard now all over Russia. And these
conversations after “Vladimir’s Day” in St. Petersburg will not
remain mere talk.

Themilitary plan of the tsar’s uncle, Vladimir, who directed the massacre, was
to keep the people from the suburbs, the workers’ suburbs, away from the centre
of the city. No pains were spared to make the soldiers believe that the workers
wanted to demolish the Winter Palace (by means of icons, crosses, and
petitions!) and kill the tsar. The strategic task was simply to guard the
bridges and the main streets leading to the Palace Square. And the principal
scenes of “military operations” were the squares near the bridges
(the Troitsky, Samsonievsky, Nikolayevsky, and Palace bridges), as well as the
streets leading from the working-class districts to the centre (the Narvskaya
Zastava, Schlüsselburg Highway, and Nevsky Prospekt), and, lastly, the Palace
Square itself, to which thousands upon thousands of workers penetrated in spite
of the massed troops and the resistance they met with. Military operations were,
of course, rendered much easier by the fact that everybody
knew perfectly well where the workers were going, that there was but one
rallying point and one. objective. The valiant generals attacked
“successfully” an enemy who had come unarmed and made his
destination and purpose known in advance...: It was a dastardly, cold-blooded
massacre of defenceless and peaceful people. For a long time to come new the
masses will think over and re live in memory and in story all that took
place. The sole and inevitable conclusion drawn from these reflections, from the
assimilation of “Vladimir’s lesson” in the minds of the masses, will
be à la guerre comme à la guerre. The working-class masses, and,
following their lead, the masses of the rural poor, will realise that they are
combatants in a war, and then ... then the next battles of our civil war will be
fought according to plan, but no longer according to the “plan” of
grand dukes and the tsars. The call “To arms!” which sounded among a crowd
of workers in Nevsky Prospekt on January 9 cannot die away now without
reverberation.